Just as the convoy slowed to play nice with the RMP roadblock and follow their orders to go into search and quarantine, the men in front noticed something behind was wrong.
As his wagon came to a juddering stop, Corporal Ashdown glanced behind him, just in time to see a mostly fingerless and dead hand swing forwards and latch onto the collar of his smock to drag him backwards.
He yelled out loud in fright, unable to summon the strength in his abdominal muscles to pull both his and the upper body of his attacker back upright. Broken and bloody hands tore at him from within army camouflaged uniform sleeves, and his confusion that one of his own men would do this temporarily blinded him to the priorities. Just as his brain engaged sufficient muscle-memory to reach for his bayonet, the teeth clamped down hard onto his shoulder and lanced pain through his body like a cold knife.
Ashdown screamed, heard what he thought was a distinct crack of bone, and slipped backwards from the Spartan to tumble end over end off the side and to the road below.
Miraculously, Horton had covered the hundred-yard distance despite his twisted ankle and arrived before even the men of the checkpoint had responded to what was happening. Given the speed with which events had unfolded, he hadn’t had time to fix his bayonet to his weapon, so instead he reversed it as he half-ran, half-hobbled, to swing the folding stock like a club into the side of the head of the thing.
The scene before him stayed in his mind, stuck there like a macabre freeze-frame that would never leave him. He looked down on a trooper, pulled bodily from his tank without warning, who had half of a soldier − literally, the top half of the body − pushed away from his face with both hands as he screamed repeatedly, stopping only for gasps of air. The half a soldier tried to crane forward, to snap its teeth down, and to try and take a piece of him. It didn’t have legs, so it couldn’t gain enough purchase to bear down on its intended meal. Broken, ragged fingers clawed at him, scoring deep, bloody marks down his face and neck until Horton caught up to the desperate scramble for survival and caved in the right side of the rotting skull.
He hit it like a cricketer stepping into a fast bowl to send the ball high into the stands. The sound that accompanied the swing was less leather on willow and resoundingly more metal on skull. The crunch of the impact and the answering squelch of the twice-dead corpse hitting the roadway beside Ashdown stopped the screaming and left a ringing silence of frozen inactivity.
That inactivity was shattered by the arrival of the Squadron Sergeant Major, who jogged onto the scene and bellowed orders to stir men into action and usefulness.
“Get that bloody barricade secured,” he shouted, pointing ahead to the tank that still hadn’t returned to its blocking position, “You lot, get into search and quarantine. Sergeant Swift?”
“Sir,” came the acknowledgement from somewhere behind him.
“I’ll trouble you to expedite matters, if you don’t mind?” he asked pointedly, as everyone else heard the polite phraseology for, ‘hurry up and do your fucking job without me having to remind you’.
“Horton,” Johnson said through a heaving chest, only now showing that the mad dash downhill had left him in need of oxygen, “help me get him inside.”
“But Sir,” Horton responded uncertainly, “the standing orders…”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Johnson snarled quietly for just Horton to hear, “my standing orders are to search returning soldiers for injuries, and quarantine them for a time. The order to,” he hesitated as he looked down at his corporal who was wide-eyed in shock and terror, “render them safe is only when infection is confirmed.”
With that, he hauled Ashdown to his feet and Horton spurred himself to assist. The man was breathing rapidly but neither man could feel his skin burning hot beneath his clothing yet. They bundled him into a room of a nearby building which had been cleared for the purpose of quarantining returning men, and they laid him down on the table.
“Out,” Johnson ordered the young military policeman stationed there, not turning to watch as the boy fled gratefully.
“You’re alright, son,” Johnson repeated as he fumbled to remove the webbing and strip his smock and undershirt away. Ashdown said nothing as the two men worked together, roughly pulling his uniform off him. He had dropped into a kind of catatonic state, eyes wide but unseeing and unresponsive.
“There,” Horton said, pointing at his right shoulder and taking an involuntary step backwards. Johnson looked and saw livid bruising already forming over his collar bone.
“Get a medic,” he said, sensing Horton hesitate a fraction of a second before leaving the room, “you’re alright, son,” he said again.
The door burst open and Horton returned with one of the marines who was fumbling free a medical kit from his pack. Horton had clearly used his initiative and the authority of his rank to remove a quarantined soldier, rationalising that the man was only going to another quarantined area.
“What have we got?” the marine said, his broad Midlands accent filling the room.
“Nasty bruising on his shoulder, and deep scratches to his face and neck,” Johnson responded.
“Has the rest of him been checked?” the marine asked, “For bites, I mean?”
Johnson said nothing but began to untie and remove the man’s boots as the others helped to strip him totally naked and turn him this way and that to check every part of his body.
“He’s fine,” said the marine, “just those two wounds.” He thought out loud as he clamped a large hand down on Ashdown’s forehead, “What’s his name?”
Johnson thought for a second, feeling that annoyance everybody experienced when known information escaped them the same second it was asked for.
“Ashdown,” he said after a pause that made him look as though he didn’t know his own men, “Graham Ashdown, Corporal,” he added, unnecessarily giving the man’s rank when it was visible on the arms of his uniform smock.
“Ok, Graham, can you hear me, mate?” the marine asked as he peered into his eyes. Johnson stole a glance himself, expecting to see the eyeballs turning milky and blinking, when he realised they were not.
Ashdown mumbled in response as he seemed to come around.
“Didn’t go through,” he said weakly, his voice cracking as he spoke, “bite didn’t go through.”
“He’s right, you know,” the marine said, “this bruising isn’t teeth marks, its something else.”
“His webbing straps,” Horton said as logic descended on him, “the thing bit him on the strap and just pinched him.”
“I think it did more than that,” the marine answered as he worked, “the bugger’s fractured the bone, I think.”
Johnson and Horton both winced at the thought of the pain that would bring the man, but the marine’s next words sobered their thoughts.
“These scratches are nasty,” he said worryingly, “and likely to cause infection.”
Johnson froze, levelled the man with a stare and asked him precisely what he meant by infection.
“Sepsis. Blood poisoning. That kind of thing?” the man said dismissively, making the two men relax until his next words brought them back to a harsh reality again, “but there’s always the risk that the other kind of infection might be passed this way…”
The silence hung heavy once more before the marine spoke again.
“Help me make him comfortable,” he said, indicating a stack of sheets on a dresser.
Making Ashdown ‘comfortable’ actually meant tying him down to the table by wrapping the sheets around him and leaving only the upper chest, neck and head exposed. The marine periodically checked Ashdown’s temperature with a flat hand on his forehead, and each time he didn’t detect any sudden rise. That wasn’t to say, conclusively, that the infection wasn’t there and spreading at a lower rate than they had seen before.
“I’ll take it from here, Sir,” the marine said as he prepared to clean and dress the long gouges in the injured man’s flesh, “if you could just make sure th
ere’s a man on the other side of the door?”
Johnson nodded and turned to leave, then swung back.
“Thank you, Marine,” he said in a voice full of genuine meaning, “What’s your name?”
“Sealey, Sir,” he answered, then Johnson turned back to the door to leave.
Outside, Johnson and Horton both drew in long breaths and turned to see Sergeant Swift and his corporal approaching.
“Sir, Sergeant,” he said formally, “if you’ll both come with me, please?”
Johnson stopped dead and stared at the man.
“I beg your pardon, Sergeant?” he asked icily.
“Sir,” Swift began awkwardly, “your own orders. You’ve both been exposed to one of them and you need to go into quarantine, just a few hours until we know there aren’t any problems…” he trailed off, hoping that good sense would prevail, and the big warrant officer wouldn’t tear him apart in front of most of his men. Johnson tensed for a moment as the temporary indecision raged inside him, then he abruptly relaxed and seemed to soften slightly.
“Quite right, Sergeant,” he said with a false smile, before turning to Horton and asking, “Shall we?” then setting off back to the room they had just vacated.
“Sir,” Swift said hesitantly, a hint of warning creeping into his tone and setting Johnson off as he hoped he wouldn’t.
The SSM rounded on him, towering above him by only a few inches but utterly dominating the much younger man.
“Sergeant,” he growled, “I am playing along and putting myself into quarantine for a few hours, but I am not going into the main hall where my men can become stressed and worried about my being in there,” he said as he stepped slowly towards the man, forcing him to pace backwards to avoid the slow collision, “Furthermore,” he went on in a more insistent tone, “I’m not going back to my men under these circumstances without definitive news regarding the wellbeing of Corporal Ashdown. Is that understood?”
Swift swallowed and nodded, standing very still as Johnson turned and walked back into the room they had vacated, and closed the door behind them.
“And fetch the Captain,” he shouted through the door after it had banged shut.
Marine Sealey looked up at them, seemed to understand quickly and shrugged before returning to his ministering of Ashdown’s wounds.
“Need a hand?” Horton asked him, seeing the marine simply shake his head as he concentrated.
With nothing better to do, Johnson and Horton found chairs and settled in for the wait.
~
The afternoon grew dark as unexpected rain clouds billowed in from the direction of the sea. Peter and Amber had brought down thick duvets from the beds upstairs to make themselves comfortable dens on the two settees arranged so that they were facing one another. Strangely, the house didn’t have a television set, but the large radio and collection of records arranged under the turntable showed that at least whoever lived there wasn’t totally boring.
The bedrooms, only two of them, seemed almost unlived in, and one of them had no personal touches at all, which made Peter think it was a guest bedroom. Applying logic and all that he knew about the world, he decided that a woman lived there on her own. It had to be a woman, he knew, because things were too neat and orderly for it to be a man living alone.
There were all sorts of treats and chocolate bars hidden away in kitchen cupboards and the two children smiled at each other as they ate them. Even better, there were glass bottles of fizzy drinks which needed a bottle opener to free their sugary goodness, and the two of them drank and took turns to let out burps as though it were some kind of competition.
As that amusement wore off, a sudden noise at the back door made both of them jump. Despite Amber’s young age, she didn’t cry out in fright, but Peter’s heart raced so that he was forced to slow his breathing down. He was the protector now, and he felt fear in a way like no other when he had only been responsible for his own life. He rose up, keeping his body low as he snatched up the pitchfork that was never far from his reach. Edging towards the back door, he paused to listen, hearing nothing, and just as he began to relax, something erupted from the dull light outside the window to launch itself through the gap.
Claws scratched and scrabbled at the glass and the frame, and wide, yellow eyes bore into Peter’s own as he fell backwards with a strangled squawk of fear.
Frozen in situ, half-in and half-out of the narrow gap, a mottled black and brown cat glared at him with accusatory indignation. It kept its eyes on him, squeezing the rest of its body through as it landed lightly on the kitchen worktop and let out a low yowling sound in his direction.
As foolish as he felt, Peter got the impression that he was being asked a question, and as foolish as he sounded even to himself, he answered it.
“We just needed somewhere safe to stay,” he told the cat in a low voice, then jumped again as the cat dropped down from the worktop without warning and paced past him to trot towards the settees. He turned to see it had its tail held high and vertical with the top curled around like it was a living question mark. Even from three paces away he could hear the deep, percussive rattle of the cat’s purring as it nuzzled Amber, before rising on its back legs to rub one side of its whiskers along her outstretched hand. She giggled lightly, and the cat turned to repeat the gesture on the other side of its face before hopping up effortlessly to nuzzle her face and knead the duvet on her lap.
Feeling distinctly as though he was the intruder, the items he had discarded before in the kitchen came back to him. He had ignored the tins of cat food as an irrelevance, as though the thought of any animal surviving had been pushed from his mind, after the dog he had tried so hard to forget about.
The obvious evidence to the contrary had now settled down and begun a rigorous washing process on Amber’s lap, pausing occasionally to lick her hand when it came close enough, and made her giggle again.
Peter felt suddenly ashamed, as though he had broken into the house of someone who was still around, because the cat evidently lived there.
He opened a tin from the kitchen and scraped out the foul-smelling contents onto a side plate. As soon as the can opener sang its metallic tune to cut off the top, the cat abandoned its cleaning ritual and bounded up onto the side, where it snaked its way in between Peter’s hands until the meal was prepared. Leaving the plate on the side, they both watched as the cat ate hungrily, purring the whole time and surprising him that such feline ventriloquism was even possible. Finishing the entire plate and licking the jelly residue clean, the cat promptly stepped back to the windowsill and leapt up to squeeze itself back outside.
Peter glanced back to Amber, seeing her expression fall back into the sadness he had known previously. He tried to cheer her up with more chocolate, which didn’t work. He tried drinking more of the fizzy drink and pulled faces as he burped musically but she stayed crestfallen at the loss of something that had made her happy.
Giving in, Peter settled down to sleep on the settee and drifted away trying to think of ways to keep her safe and happy.
Chapter 11
Life below the waves was a claustrophobic, dank, stifling existence of enforced silence. Any man over five and a half feet tall suffered from constant spinal issues given any amount of time spend on board a boat, but the long journey around the Horn of Africa and back north to British waters was made under the strictest insistence that the journey remained covert. That meant that the submarine could only surface when absolutely necessary, and the remainder of the time had to be spent running quietly.
The four men who were the precious cargo of the route, all of them sporting wild beards beneath staring eyes, had little to do besides lay in their cramped berths and wait for the journey to be over, but then men of their experience were not known for complaining about hardship.
Their commander, Major Clive Downes, was the newest man to the regiment and would be forced to rotate out at some point in the future, or at least he would have under normal circu
mstances, but he had no idea what would happen, given this latest development.
He and his team had been in Afghanistan, unofficially of course, and had been teaching the rag-tag collection of goat herders and illiterate villagers the finer points of improvised explosive device manufacture and planning, in addition to delivering the manual on the American-made and supplied Stinger missile system.
The Soviets had officially ceased hostilities in the country after a decade of vicious counter-insurgency had left the region a war-torn mess, and that war had cost the Russians dearly. It was already widely known amongst the military as Russia’s own Vietnam.
The fighting of enemies via a proxy was nothing new, and it was a badly-kept secret that the west was supplying and supporting the insurgents as a way to chip at the iron curtain without getting their own hands dirty. At least not publicly, anyway.
Downes had received orders, bizarrely through the channels of the Royal Navy, and he had followed those orders, which led him and the three men under his command to be sharing the same stale air in a submarine compartment barely big enough for their equipment. Any questions he had thought to ask were cut off, as the orders were given with a resounding, “out” at the end. The four Americans working alongside them, each going by an obviously false moniker, were also extracted via the same strategy, but they saw little of them on the journey, and guessed they had been whisked away to report to their CIA masters as soon as they surfaced.
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